The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
A baseboard management controller (BMC) refers to a specialized microcontroller that manages the interface between system management software and platform hardware. The BMC may be embedded on the baseboard or motherboard of a computer, generally a server. For example, different types of sensors can be built into the computer system, and the BMC reads these sensors to obtain parameters such as temperature, cooling fan speeds, power status, operating system (OS) status, etc.
Typically, a BMC has a flash memory or other types of non-volatile memory to store its firmware and other necessary configuration data. The flash memory has a limited write cycle range. A write cycle, sometimes referred to as a program/erase (P/E) cycle, is a process of recording data on the flash memory. A flash memory may generally withstand a certain number of write cycles before the integrity of the flash memory starts to deteriorate. However, in the BMC operation, the configuration data may be changed or updated due to certain configuration events. In some cases, each configuration change may generate multiple write cycles, thus reducing the lifespan of the flash memory.
Therefore, an unaddressed need exists in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.